


Teamwork

by Doorway



Category: Stand Still Stay Silent
Genre: Adventure, Gen, Shenanigans, Teamwork
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-06-14
Updated: 2016-06-14
Packaged: 2018-07-15 03:00:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,205
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7203782
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Doorway/pseuds/Doorway
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A challenge requires the whole team to cooperate. They function like a repeatedly battered Swiss watch.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Teamwork

“No.”

“No? No as in maybe?”

Tuuri translated.

“No.”

“I see…” Sigrun remained pensive for a moment. “No as in, yes, if we’re careful?”

Tuuri translated.

“No.”

Sigrun tapped her fingers impatiently on the map. “Short stuff, I think your cousin has misunderstood my question.”

“Sigrun, I really don’t think-”

“Ask again, and make sure you translate using the precise words. Are you ready?”

Tuuri nodded.

Sigrun spoke slowly and clearly. “How. Do. We. Get. There. Lalli?” she added as an afterthought.

Tuuri translated.

Lalli listened to her carefully, thought for roughly a whole minute, and answered.

“No.”

Finally, Sigrun had enough and slammed her fist on the map. “What does it mean, no?!” she yelled. “It’s a god-damned _square!_ It has a lot of openings! A lot of exits! And yesterday you said there were no dead bodies in any building, it had been evacuated properly!” She wiggled a finger. “If this is about those weird ghosts again… Uh… we’ll have to think of a new strategy, because we can’t just turn tail and run every time a ghost decides to moan at us!”

Tuuri turned to her cousin. “Actually, Lalli, she has a point. Yesterday you said that as far as you could see, the whole town was safe. No trolls. No spirits. So why we can’t go there now? Is the building gone?”

Lalli shook his head. “No.”

Tuuri began losing her patience. “No _what?”_

“The building is not gone.”

“Oh. Well, why can we not go there? What’s the obstacle?”

“The giant.”

As Lalli was still speaking Finnish, only Tuuri could react properly to this message while the rest of the team listened on pointlessly. “What? A GIANT?”

“Yes.”

“How? You said the town had been evacuated!”

“No. I said I couldn’t find any trolls. I found them today. They’re the giant.”

The team listened with hardened expressions while Tuuri translated the grim news.

“Huh,” Sigrun said when she finished. “So every guy and gal in this place either left, or became part of the giant. Sucks. I’ve killed a few giants in my time, though. How big is this thing, exactly.”

They waited for the translation.

“Uh. Lalli says it’s the size of the square…”

They all exchanged glances.

“So… no,” Sigrun said after a short while.

“No,” Lalli agreed.

“Welp, that’s it, folks!” the captain sighed. “Time to turn around!”

“What? _Now?”_ Mikkel cut in, shocked.

“You heard the twig talking. A giant the size of a square. No. Just… No,” Sigrun admitted, looking defeated. A rare sight. Emil and Tuuri stood dumbfounded just because of it.

“We can’t go back now!” Mikkel insisted, desperate. “We have been travelling for more than a week just to get here! And most of the time we didn’t find any good books! And now we’re going to turn back empty-handed?”

“Tough. But yes,” Sigrun dismissed him with a flicker of her finger.

Mikkel was at a loss of words. “But… we’ve all worked so hard for it! And it’s the next clue for my cu- for our search for the cure’s trail! We can’t just… give up now!”

“Sure we can!” Sigrun replied cheerfully. “Yeah, it’s a pity, but we don’t really have any choice. Size of that thing, we can’t kill it.”

“Uh,” Emil rose a hesitant finger. “What if we blew it up?”

Sigrun placed a sympathetic hand on his shoulder. “I appreciate your courage, Emil, it’s admirable, but you need to learn there are limits. Thing that big, it’s gonna need all the explosives in a military base to kill. And even if we _did_ have them, it would result in the building -heck, half the town- getting destroyed as well. It’s hopeless.”

“Is it possible to use a similar technique to the one you use for sea trolls in Norway?” Mikkel tried.

“Hah. How can we strand a thing that big? It’s not aquatic! It has been stranded there a _century_ and not died; it won’t start now to humor us! Plus, how to get it moving? I don’t know how fast it is and I don’t intent to find out. It could be very slow, it could be so fast as to leap over the city and step on our tank. Who wants to volunteer to check its speed?”

Silence followed her words.

“Thought so. Well, if you’ll excuse me, I now have to order this thing around-”

“A pity, then,” Mikkel cut in, head hang low, eyelids drooping. “So close to possibly finding a cure…”

“Cheer up, big guy! We have achieved lots of stuff, anyway, partly thanks to you!” Sigrun slapped him on the back with all her strength. He didn’t bat an eyelid.

“That’s not it… I’m just a bit sad we give up after being so close! Tuuri driving so long, with nothing to show for it. Everyone working hard, in sub-optimal conditions… Sure, they’ll send a better equipped team some decades later, and they’ll get all the glory, and rightly so, since we give up simply after hearing the report of a sleep-deprived scout… Of course, what’s the point, since there’s nothing we can do… But, maybe, if Lalli could take a couple of pictures or something, then we might be able to show them to the government. The _next_ team would be properly prepared… thanks to us… Our names would be written down in history…”

Sigrun rubbed her chin. “Well, photos, huh… From far away… If he can sneak around it unnoticed, he could probably take photos, too.”

“Uh… Lalli has no idea what a camera is,” Tuuri answered flatly.

“Well, there goes that plan,” Mikkel sighed. “I suppose it would be too good to be true; just imagine how much these photos would cost, and how valuable the person responsible for them would be! He could find a job anywhere, in any country! The brave explorer paving the road for the cure! Why, I’d imagine that with enough photographs, the government might be a lot faster in sending a proper recovery team.”

“That’s enough,” snapped Sigrun, “quit your talking! It’s not gonna happen and you’re not helping. Even if Lalli could use a camera, I wouldn’t send him. We’re not risking everything so that some fancy team can find the road paved.”

“Of course. I was just saying…” Mikkel looked away in shame.

“Well quit it!” Sigrun yanked him by the arm and pulled him away. “We’re leaving immediately, I don’t like this place!”

“Sigrun, I think your arm just twitched. Is it ok? Let me see the scars…”

“What the heck, it healed weeks ago!”

“There is a rare disorder that begins as involuntary, unconscious twitching, and ends with the limb falling off. Let me check.”

“My arm is fine!”

“Stand still Sigrun, this will take a while.”

They continued to argue until Mikkel slammed the door closed and they were out of hearing range.

When Sigrun and Mikkel re-emerged from the back of the tank about an hour later, they discovered with great surprise (in Mikkel’s case the surprise was maybe a little bit too evident) that Lalli and Tuuri were gone.

For a walk.

In the woods.

Towards the town.

And no one could find the camera.


End file.
